Timers don't run when a group is re-activated - any work around?

When I deactivate a group that has a timer event in it and then reactivate it again the timers don't run.

I don't know if it's a bug or just the way Fusion was programmed, but is there anyway to overcome this?

As per attached .mfa -

If you let it run you'll see the value on screen change from 3 to 4 to 0.

If you click on the pause button after the number has changed to 3 - wait a second or two then click anywhere to cancel the pause - the number never changes away from 3.

This breaks my game if someone presses pause at the wrong moment. I did use the built-in pause at first, but because it returns a black screen when you return from pause on some devices - Android target - I tried to write my own "pause" by deactivating the groups and then reactivating them again. However, now I have this problem.

This is a very simplified example just to show what was happening / not happening. My actual game code isn't anything like this - I just wrote this to illustrate the problem with the timers.

Correction: This error will also happen with the built-in Fusion pause. Once interrupted by a deactivation or pause - the timers won't run.

Maybe if you used alt values you could probably work around it. Always add 1 to Alt Val A for instance would mean Alt Val A = 60 is one second if your game is set to 60 FPS. Just have the Always add 1 event tied to your pause function so you can start and stop when needed.

Hello,
It's not a bug. It's the way you combine timers and group activation in your events that gives you this result.
When you deactivate a group, basically, everything in this group is not read anymore by Fusion. The deactivated group will not remember what lines were true before being deactivated, Fusion will simply test all the lines again when you reactivate the group. So, as your pink object is destroyed before pause, the following line :

+ the pink object collides
> pink object destroyed
> set counter to 3
> value changed after 2 seconds

will never be considered again, as the pink object is destroyed, and the value will never change after 2 seconds. Just remember that deactivate group = not read by Fusion anymore, and activate Group = Fusion tests all lines of this group again.

@Shawn - Thanks I will do that will global values as the events aren't linked to actual objects - where it's viable. In many cases it isn't because the time delay is a split second.

@Windlake - My code isn't written like that. I just created this example to try and show the error. I have an instruction if Global Value A = 1 after 2 seconds change it to Global Value A = 2. If I deactivate the group in the middle of this process and it's reading everything again from scratch then Global Value A would still equal 1 and it should then start the 2 second timer. But it doesn't do that. It does nothing.


What it really means, that if this feature isn't a bug it is absolutely useless because any pause at any stage will interrupt a timer event and the timer event will then not complete.

What I am trying to do to overcome it is to test every value after pause that I know isn't going to change because of the timer events not running and then change them - which I'll do for all of them on 2 second timers or less. And then I'd have to rewrite the rest using countdowns and make a note to myself to never again use timer events in my games.

I don't get it. I just tried to do this with some global values and it works. I deactivate the group, global value A = 1, I reactivate the group, global value A = 2 after 2 seconds. You should really post a "real" example of your problem, cause obviously, there's a detail that's missing somewhere.

Yes, sorry it was a bad example - because I was stripping out all the extra bits to try and just show the single problem.

I block something to happen a second time - so if Global Value A =1 - that command will keep on running. I will block it by saying - Set Global Value A = 3 now, and then after 2 seconds set it to 1 so that the event isn't continuously triggering. That means that when the group is deactivated - because Fusion doesn't save the place in the timer - that command cannot run again. Usually there will be a lot of other stuff included in that event that I don't want to trigger twice as well.

Also if you set something to happen after 5 seconds - and the place in the timer isn't saved - and it's deactivated after 4 seconds - then when it is reactivated it will take another 5 seconds on top of the 4 seconds it already took - which could also impact on a game - especially if you're dealing with a time-sensitive game.

When you have 2000 events you have a very different Fusion than when you have 5 events - I noticed that a command that I forget to say "run only once" - will in any event only run once because of the delay in Fusion getting back to it. On shorter levels - it was continuously triggered - this kind of thing also impacts on this event failing to run a 2nd time - but is super hard to recreate in an example here.

Fusion does save some stuff - for example if you deactivate a group while a sound is playing - it will stop the sound right there - and then carry on from there when it's activated again.

In other game development software I used the deactivation saved your place - and if you activated it again - it continued from there. So I was expecting the same behaviour - but as you explained that's not the way Fusion works.

I still feel that it's a mistake to not save the progress of a timer when a pause function is triggered.

I understand now :)
Actually, i think that you should really not consider "Deactivate Group" as a pause function, because it's definitly not the way it works.

I don't have the same results with music and group deactivation. On my PC, a sound doesn't stop if you deactivate the group where the sound is played. And when you reactivate the group, the sound starts from scratch again... I think there's too many specificities in your code that probably are messing around with each other, but it's very difficult to isolate the real problem in a long code :/

Your statement with "run only once" is curious too... But be careful with it : the 2 following events

(case 1)
+If variable A = 3
+ run only once

and

(case 2)
+run only once
+If variable A = 3

are different.

In case 1, Fusion will run the event only if variable A = 3 and will never run it again.
In case 2, Fusion will test the event only once and will never test the line again, no matter if the IF statement is true or false.

Thanks for the info.

I pause all sounds and then resume all sounds as well - so I guess that is what is triggering the sound issue - not the activate / deactivate part.

The problem with Fusion's pause is that it returns a black screen on my cell phone - and because this is the first game where I've tried to go full screen on Android (hide the menu bars) I got caught by it a few times, trying to switch it on because it looked like it had switched off - instead of tapping the screen - so I decided to try and write a pseudo-pause - where everything stops, but isn't really paused - to see if I could avoid that happening. I don't have a better solution right now.

Yea I tried the Fusion built-in pause in my project, and it basically pauses everything and that's it. That was definitly not what I was looking for back then :/
I'm not working on android apps,so I can't really help you there, but I had to do my own pause functionnality eventually. I think doing a custom pause function is atm the best bet for us. At least, we have the possibility to control exactly what's paused and what isn't, but it requires more work from us. Well, at least it's doable, I guess ^^

I'm the opposite - I wanted a built-in pause that would automatically pause the game - only it has to work properly - and it doesn't.

I switched to Fusion because of the built-in Functions only to discover that the vast majority of them aren't useable in all environments and in most cases I only discover that when I test the game and then have to rewrite everything. It's left me very frustrated with the software. (I mean features that are built-in that weren't taken up in Android, but there's no documentation to tell you that, or won't work in Direct X etc.)